Gotlandsdricke - an overview

A lot has been written on Gotlandsdricka, but the writers generally
call it "an ancient beer" or "indigenous beer" and variations on that
theme. Nobody seems to have realized that it is of course a farmhouse
ale. Farmhouse ale was made all over Sweden until it was replaced by
modern commercial beer. Except on Gotland, where the farmers never
stopped brewing it. Eventually it came to be seen as something unique
to Gotland and part of the Gotland identity, but that's a recent
development.

How this came to be is no mystery at all. Gotland fits perfectly
with the criterion for a place where farmhouse brewing survived:
"isolated farming community with good-sized population." Gotland is
three hours by ferry from the mainland, has lots of agriculture in the
southern part of the island, and a population of about 60,000.

Gotland is actually an interesting place in other ways, too. In
many ways it's the crossroads of the Baltic, nearly as close to Latvia
and the Estonian islands as to Sweden. Gotland has been a hotspot for
trade since at least 1000 BCE. In the viking period the Gotland
traders had trading offices in London and Novgorod, and their hoards
of silver coins are still being dug out of the ground in Gotland.
The Havor find of a Roman wine set from the
first centuries CE is another example of Gotland being well connected
by trade.

Traditionally, people were farmers all over Gotland itself and the
smaller Fårö just north of Gotland. Anyone who's ever been to Fårö
could be forgiven for doubting this, because there's barely any soil
on Fårö. The farmers there burned kelp, and strewed it on the stones.
That was enough for them to be able to grow rye, which to astonished
visitors seemed to sprout right out of the stones.

Fårö and northern Gotland are not very fertile, and in the late
19th century limestone quarrying and burning became a major industry
there. That led to much of the farming being abandoned, and also
caused workers to move to Gotland from the mainland. The effect was
that the farmhouse brewing died out in the northern part of the
island.

Originally, this was classic farmhouse brewing, with farmers
malting their own grain, growing their own hops, and keeping their own
yeast. Just like elsewhere, this pattern gradually broke up. According
to Salomonsson[15], the last time he heard of "home yeast"
("hemjäst"), that is, kveik, was in 1973. As
far as I know, the local yeast has now died out completely. Many
people started buying their malts from the local brewery instead of
making it, but that tradition still lives, as we've
seen. And some still grow hops.

Old kitchen with brewing implements, Bunge county museum, Gotland

Most published descriptions of gotlandsdricke just give a single
recipe, citing no sources. Or they give a recipe that's altered to
suit modern home brewers. That makes it very difficult to tell how
accurate the descriptions are. And quite often the published accounts
contradict each other. "The malts were smoked with beech wood," says
one. "The malts were smoked with alder wood," says another. So what's
correct? Time to turn to the recipe collection.

Below is a table of every single Gotland recipe I have, collected
from all kinds of sources.

No

Grain

Boil

Juniper

Infusion

Hops

Smoked

1

Rye, barley

Y

Y

N

Y

Y

2

?

Short

Y

N

Y

?

3

Barley

Y

Y

Y

Y

Y

4

Barley

N

Y

Y

Y

Y

5

?

Y

Y

Y

Y

?

6

Barley

Y

Y

Y

Y

N

7

Barley

Short

Y

Y

Y

?

8

Barley

Y

Y

Y

Y

Y

9

Rye

Y

?

?

Y

?

10

?

Y

?

?

Y

?

11

?

N

Y

Y

Y

?

12

?

Y

N

N

Y

?

13

?

Y

Y

Y

Y

Y

14

Barley

Y/N

Y

Y

Y

Y

Note that [9] is from Fårö, which explains the rye.

So, what can we learn from this? On Gotland itself, people seem to
have preferred barley malts, and used rye only if they had to, which
they very rarely did. Most people used smoked malts. Everyone used
hops. Nearly everyone used juniper in the strainer, and most people
also used juniper infusion. The juniper seems to be a major part of
the character of the style, but as with Norwegian, Finnish, Estonian,
and Latvian farmhouse ale we are talking about
juniper branches.

As for boiling the wort, we have two accounts not doing it, two
with short boils, and nine normal boils. So for the most part modern
gotlandsdricke seems to have been boiled, but it's clearly been quite
common not to boil as well. How recently boiling was introduced is
impossible to tell from the sources I have.

Another question is the type of wood used to smoke the malts. This
has a major impact on what smoke flavour you get. The data is very
sparse, but we find: alder [4], birch [12], birch [16]. This is
actually similar to the data for Sweden in general, and also Norway.
So we can conclude both alder and birch were used on Gotland, and it
wouldn't surprise me to also find pine and juniper. Beech probably
wasn't used, because it doesn't grow naturally on the island.

Malt drying house, Bunge museum

The most common malting method appears to have been pretty much the
same as the Norwegian badstu (bath
house/sauna), even if the building itself looked rather different.
There is also the "loft kiln," which is a rack next to the chimney
with perforated wooden planks. An older variation is the "floor kiln",
which has the rack much closer to the fire, which means the maltster
has to be very careful with the wood fire, and stir the malts
frequently. So it seems smoked malts really was the norm on Gotland[17].

Other things we learn are that boiling the mash seems to be
unknown, as does step mashing. No mention of baked malts or hot
stones. However, one brewer apparently does an initial cold mash,
where the ground malts are left in cold water over night before the
mash is heated.

The strength of the beer is hard to judge, as always, but five
recipes have 250g of malts per liter of beer, while one has 120g.
Some of these ratios were with home-made malts, and quite a few also
used sugar, which complicates the question of how strong the beer is.
I don't have enough data on the efficiency of the traditional mashing
methods to dare compute an ABV.

Today, fermentation times seem to be 5-7 days, which is probably
longer than they were before, which again is likely to be due to the
use of baking yeast rather than kveik (traditional yeast). The beer
has very little carbonation, beyond what's produced by continued
fermentation in the serving vessel.

Reconstructed communal feasting hall, Bunge museum

As far as the hopping goes, that's all over the place. One recipe
has 4 grams/liter[4], one has 0.4 [7], and one has 0.05 [8]. The beer
with the most hops was Anders Mattsson's, and
that one I've actually tasted. There was no discernible hop character
in it, probably because he boiled the hop tea in such a small volume
of water. So I think overall it's probably safe to declare that like
most farmhouse ale, Gotlandsdricke has very little if any hop taste.

Anyway, this is what I've been able to find out about
Gotlandsdricke so far. It's definitely a low-carbonated, paleish,
smoky farmhouse ale with juniper infusion from barley malts and very
little hop character. I should have been able to collect more detail,
and taste enough of them to make a proper style description, but that
isn't possible yet. I'm hoping to eventually visit Gotland again and
taste more examples.

Old farmhouse, Bunge museum

Sources

Much of the background in this blog post is taken from Anders
Salomonsson's book[14] on Gotlandsdricke.

Another intriguing chapter into Scandinavian brewing history - as always. From what you mentioned about the badstu, it would be amazing if malt kilning culture and sauna culture were interwoven in the distant past of northern Europe.

Lars Marius Garshol - 2017-01-08 12:39:11

@Alec: It's entirely possible that they were. I still haven't finished researching this, but I think Ilmar Talve's massive tome on exactly this subject should have the answer.

Jeremiah Fiegl - 2017-01-08 21:09:13

If you are familiar with the 2015 BJCP guidelines, what beer would you classify the base beer as? I'm entering a competition as a Wild Specialty beer, but I'm at a loss for the base beer other than a spice and vegetable beer which would also require a base beer.

note: I fermented with 100% brett.

Lars Marius Garshol - 2017-01-14 06:14:20

@Jeremiah: I overlooked this comment. My apologies.

I don't understand your question. What do you mean "base beer"? The beer is gotlandsdricke. That's the style. It's not in BJCP, but that's their problem. It is in the newest Brewers Association styles, but they misunderstood a few things.